Thomas Tuchel brings The Surge to make England genuine World Cup threat

Head coach wants players to use energy in the right spaces and is also getting the best out of an in-form Harry Kane

It didn’t take long for one wag in the travelling England caravan to come up with a deeply inappropriate nickname for that jazzed-up high-energy start to the second-half performance in Dallas last Wednesday. That name was: Packetball.

The word packet is, the Urban Dictionary confirms, slang for a small sachet of the same illegal and wholly inadvisable stimulant that was discovered in more than half of the Wembley Stadium toilets by a newspaper investigation after a home qualifier during the Southgate era.